Cavity Wall Ties

Ryan1998

We are trying to sell a deceased family members home but the home insurance has expired and the cavity wall ties need to be replaced.
Does anyone know any Insurance companies that will insure the home? All companies we have contacted will not insure the house due to the issue of the cavity wall ties!

any help will be appreciated 

sgun

How do you know they need to be replaced?

Ryan1998

A survey has been undertaken and the outcome was the ties need replacing 

davidmcn

Ryan1998 said:

A survey has been undertaken and the outcome was the ties need replacing 

And is it relevant to the building insurance? It's not something the policy would cover anyway, and I can't remember ever having been asked the question by insurers.

Ryan1998

Basically, we need to pay for the wall ties to be replaced and we know no insurer cover this. We accept this.

But we need house insurance to be in place while we replace the ties. But no insurer will cover us as they require the wall ties to be replaced first. But we don’t want to complete any wall tie works without having regular home insurance in place, because what happens if something else happens to the house and then we are not covered as we don’t have any insurance?

so what we want to know is, is there any insurance company who will insure an empty house while the cavity wall ties are needing to be replaced? 

theartfullodger

Get insurance from someone else.  Possibly more expensive.

ic

As above, an insurer should be able to arrange insurance that say excludes any event related to the wall ties, but cover everything else.  Perhaps go to a broker who can deal with the insurers and negotiate the right cover for you?

Tippytoes

This made me think about a house I bought many years ago.  Back then, the survey said that the wall ties needed replacing.  We never got round to doing it.  When we sold the house, decades later, our buyer's survey made no mention of wall ties, or the other things mentioned on the earlier survey.  It puzzled me then and it still puzzles me now.

ElephantBoy57

Tippytoes said:

This made me think about a house I bought many years ago.  Back then, the survey said that the wall ties needed replacing.  We never got round to doing it.  When we sold the house, decades later, our buyer's survey made no mention of wall ties, or the other things mentioned on the earlier survey.  It puzzled me then and it still puzzles me now.

My brother did the same. I don't think house insurance is meant to be instead of building maintenance, building insureance is for fire and flood, not a building falling down due to lack of maintenance.

AdrianC

ElephantBoy57 said:

I don't think house insurance is meant to be instead of building maintenance, building insureance is for fire and flood, not a building falling down due to lack of maintenance.

Well, as the OP said...

Ryan1998 said:

Basically, we need to pay for the wall ties to be replaced and we know no insurer cover this. We accept this.

...
But we don’t want to complete any wall tie works without having regular home insurance in place, because what happens if something else happens to the house and then we are not covered as we don’t have any insurance?

There's two issues being conflated here, I think.

Most insurers won't touch a place that's empty for an extended period, for fairly obvious reasons - nobody's going to notice a leak before it causes substantial damage, etc.

Unless the wall ties are so bad that the property is at risk of imminent collapse, I can't see how they're particularly relevant to the insurance situation.

OP - what are your fears for what else might happen?
Content theft etc? The place is empty, isn't it?
You've turned the water off, and drained it down?
Is anybody keeping an eye on it for break-in etc?

Splatfoot

We bought a house where the wall ties needed replacing after our survey picked them up. We moved into the house, with home insurance (the question wasn't even asked?) and did the wall ties a few months later.  Baffled why your insurers would even need to know.